


they'll tell you now, you're the lucky one

by musicfeedsthesoul



Category: Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Healing, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 11:08:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17344199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicfeedsthesoul/pseuds/musicfeedsthesoul
Summary: When the world - or, at the very least, her world - quite literally collapses around her, Claire Dearing can’t help but wonder if she has finally pushed her luck too far.orClaire Dearing reminisces about life, love, and loss in the face of a tragic return to the park that started it all.





	they'll tell you now, you're the lucky one

When the world - or, at the very least,  _ her world _ \- quite literally collapses around her, Claire Dearing can’t help but wonder if she has finally pushed her luck too far. 

 

She returned to Jurassic World for barely twenty-four hours, and she almost found herself the unwilling lunch of an (extremely) predatory dinosaur. She almost drowned. She almost  _ melted _ , just like everything else in this godforsaken place. 

 

She almost lost her best friend. 

 

The park -  _ her park _ \- is gone. Really, genuinely gone this time. It disintegrated as the ash and fire poured out from Mount Sibo, consuming absolutely everything. 

 

She had genuinely believed that their rescue mission would work. Or, perhaps more accurately, she had desperately  _ hoped  _ that they would have easily been able to evacuate as many dinosaurs as possible from the island, and not find themselves fighting for their lives (again) after Mills’ team left them to, as aforementioned, literally  _ melt _ . 

 

Claire’s life tends to have a funny way of going in unforeseen directions and hinging on less than ideal outcomes, so she supposes that continuing to bother with hope is a little foolish. 

 

Her work has amounted to nothing. The Dinosaur Protection Group - her baby, the very thing she sacrificed a potentially lifelong relationship for - lost the dinosaurs to a power-hungry narcissist after her team was left to die. What could possibly be left to hope for? 

 

A small voice inside of Claire considers  _ death  _ as something that is deserving of hope, but she chides her subconscious for even suggesting it. Death is already here; how could she hope for it when she sees it virtually everywhere she looks? 

 

As she watches the last Brachiosaurus disappear into the unyielding cloud of volcanic ash, she considers the sick symbolism of the tragedy, fighting to swallow the growing lump in her throat. Sixty-six million years ago, nature had reclaimed all living things that inhabited it, and Isla Nublar is reclaiming its own contributions to life right before Claire’s eyes. She is watching dinosaurs go extinct.  _ Again _ . 

 

Except, this time, they are  _ her  _ dinosaurs. They aren’t the delightfully enrapturing (yet borderline imaginary) additions to her elementary school science classes; they are living, breathing creatures. They  _ were  _ living, breathing creatures. 

 

The individuals who represent the dozen or so species that they had been able to save fade from her mind, where the image of the helpless Brachiosaurus takes their place. All she can hear are its terrified, pleading cries, and she doesn’t think she has felt this nauseous in years. Not since she thought her cold indifference to her role as an aunt had almost cost her both of her nephews. 

 

She hopes she never has to feel this way again. She knows that she probably will. 

 

Owen places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she nearly allows herself to melt into his touch until the tragic reality that is the fragile state of their relationship comes crashing back to her. She feels sicker. 

 

A few tears manage to escape, but she does not give in to the torrent of emotion that is threatening to break free the very second she loses control and lets down her walls. Not yet.

 

***

When Owen almost dies on the roof of Benjamin Lockwood’s mansion, Claire is fairly certain that the final piece in her taped-together heart shatters like glass against the rain-soaked bricks. 

 

She almost hadn’t made it to him and Maisie in time. She  _ almost  _ hadn’t been able to distract the Indoraptor. She thought, for barely a moment, that she was going to lose him for good this time, and that would have equated to losing everything. That one simple realization (combined with the blood loss due to the wound in her leg) leaves her fighting to remain upright because she absolutely  _ does not  _ want to have survived all of the other horrors she has faced in the past three years, only to fall as a result of stunningly poor balance. 

 

She cannot lose Owen, not after the countless storms they have weathered together. Not again, not for  _ real _ . 

 

Ignoring the stabbing pain in her leg, she aims the gun at the Indoraptor. Adrenaline courses through her veins as her eyes meet Owen’s, silently communicating her suicidal plan in an instant. She trains the laser on the one person whom she cannot live without, knowing that he trusts her implicitly, and allows the gun to elicit the high-pitched sound that the Indoraptor recognizes as an attack signal.

 

As the dinosaur - no, as the  _ monster _ \- leaps at Owen, Claire squeezes her eyes tightly shut, because maybe if she does not see what  _ might  _ happen next, then it might not be real. Her fears are unjustified, however; somehow, miraculously, Owen is able to dodge the Indoraptor’s attack, but the plan does not conclude quite as she had envisioned it would. The Indoraptor slips on the glass roof and it shatters underneath its weight, yet the monster manages to regain its footing. It effortlessly claws its way back onto the roof, once again posing a legitimate threat, and Claire once again finds herself fighting the urge to vomit. 

 

They are doomed. 

 

They are doomed, and she should be training her minimal energy on devising a plan of escape, yet all she can think about are the things she has never said, but desperately wishes she could.

 

***

 

After the events that transpired at Jurassic World in 2015 - after  _ Claire  _ authorized the creation of the uncontrollable monster that very nearly ate her sister’s children, not to mention caused hundreds of injuries and the deaths of twenty-two (mostly) innocent people - she can barely bring herself to get out of bed. 

 

She has to, most days, because she is required to attend the ongoing Masrani Corporation trial, (especially considering the fact that Masrani himself was killed in the chaos, and somebody has to stand in his place as the company’s scapegoat) but she doesn’t  _ want  _ to go. Not in the least bit.

 

She does not sleep much anymore, not with the vivid nightmares that leave her soaked in tears and a cold sweat each night. It is  _ so  _ incredibly difficult to remain calm and in control when, even during her waking moments, her mind is littered with images of too many teeth and the sound of terrified screams mingled with unnatural roars. She jumps at the smallest noise and quickly discovers that her panic attack triggers are seemingly boundless, but she grits her teeth and silently suffers through what she can only assume is PTSD. 

 

This is, she thinks, the worst she has ever felt in her entire life.

 

Owen begs Claire to go to the doctor. If she would just be willing to take medication, she might ( _ would _ ) feel better. She might even be able to get a handle on her nightmares. She adamantly assures him (lying through a tight-lipped smile) that she is perfectly fine, albeit a bit sleep-deprived, and these kinds of things go away on their own. 

 

Of course, Owen is not an idiot, and he is  _ more  _ than aware that these kinds of things absolutely  _ do not _ go away on their own. He also knows better than to argue with her, however, and resolves to hope that the stubborn redhead will come to her senses.

 

She doesn’t. Not at first.

 

It is the trial that finally causes the other shoe to drop. 

 

The entire ordeal - being attacked by grieving families and, as it appears from her perspective, basically the whole world - makes her feel worse, as if that were even possible. Facing the public eye allows the guilt to settle like lead in the pit of her stomach, constantly stewing and leaving her in a perpetual state of discomfort that does  _ not  _ mix well with her inability to sleep through the night.

 

Guilt is a terrible, horrible feeling, and she desperately wishes that she could just crawl into a hole for the rest of eternity and forget that the Jurassic World incident ever even happened. These desires are especially strong on the instances during which the prosecution employs the use of particularly emotional witnesses, but she would never act on them. 

 

Claire is anything but a coward and, besides, she is far too prideful to run from her problems - regardless of how badly those problems make her feel. She  _ has  _ to see the situation through to the very end. 

 

On the second day of court, it becomes blindingly apparent to Claire that the families of the victims blame her for the deaths of their loved ones, and she can’t help but feel like they absolutely should.  _ She  _ pushed for an increase in Jurassic World’s fear factor, instead of settling for the sheer astonishment and awe that living, breathing  _ dinosaurs  _ naturally caused guests to exhibit.  _ She  _ played a pivotal role in the creation of that godforsaken hybrid, and this is the thought that replays in her mind most frequently.

 

This is absolutely her fault.

 

Accepting her role in the tragedy does not make facing angry survivors any easier. In contrast, she is quite certain that it (definitely) makes the entire situation a whole lot more unbearable.

 

Still, she wakes up every single morning and sits through hours of testimony from grieving parents, spouses, children, and friends. She listens silently as people inevitably become angry and overcome with emotion, verbally taking their frustrations out on her. It takes every last fiber of her being, but she manages to remain calm and keep her face a mask of indifference. People scream, cry, and curse at her, but she does not shed a single tear of her own.

 

She comes very close when a furious young man quite literally calls her a murderer. She can feel the tears welling up in her eyes, (because doesn’t he understand that that is exactly what she is?) and she is suddenly acutely aware that she can no longer breathe, but she steels herself and swallows hard. The rest of the group latches onto the word, and apparently so do various media outlets, because she sees it attached to a picture of her face on the nightly news.

 

She changes the channel.

 

After weeks of the trial, Claire snaps when Alex Shealy takes the stand. She feels nauseous at the mere sight of him. Out of all the testimonies she has listened to thus far, she has been dreading his the most, because she knows exactly what he will say: she killed his fiance. She couldn’t spare a few measly hours to spend time with her own nephews, so she dumped that responsibility on her perfectly capable assistant, and now Zara is dead and Claire cannot sleep at night.

 

Alex surprises her. He doesn’t scream, or yell, or toss endless obscenities in her direction; he calmly informs her that  _ she  _ is the reason why he will never have the life with Zara that he once dreamed of having.  _ She  _ is the reason why the love of his life is dead, and she deserves to be punished for that. All Claire can do is whisper that she is sorry, and she barely remembers the rest of the day because the only thing that she can picture is the pure devastation on Alex’s face - devastation that is  _ her fault _ .

 

The next thing she knows, Claire is sobbing in her car, struggling to breathe through the lump of emotion that is threatening to close her throat. Her sobs are raw, and gut-wrenching, and so incredibly  _ painful  _ that, for a moment, she seriously considers driving off of a bridge. The emotions that she has so carefully suppressed ever since the beginning of the trial are spilling out of her like an unrelenting waterfall, and she absolutely  _ hates  _ this feeling.

 

She hates feeling this… this  _ helpless _ .

 

She can’t undo the tragedy that she caused. She can’t bring Zara back to life, no matter how badly she might want to, and she can’t seem to conquer the regret that has been eating her insides for weeks. She can’t do  _ anything _ except take responsibility for her actions and learn to live with the pain. 

 

(The little voice in the back of Claire’s mind that sounds suspiciously like a certain dinosaur researcher reminds her that she still has the option of going to the doctor, but she conveniently ignores it. She refuses to give Owen the satisfaction of being right, not about this).

 

God, that makes her angry. Her very nature is screaming at her that she has to do  _ something _ , and she wants to scream until her lungs bleed because her entire body feels like it is on fire, but she can’t allow herself to lose control like that. Not here, not now, not where anyone could see that she isn’t the detached ice queen she has made herself out to be on the stand.

 

But still, the feeling builds until she can no longer take it, and she begins to repeatedly punch the steering wheel in an effort to relieve her anguish. She only stops once she is finally able to replace her pain with a new kind in her hands. 

 

It doesn’t help.

 

***

 

It is a never-ending cycle. Claire goes to court, Owen searches for a job, and they cling to one another at night, too afraid of the devils that exist within their minds to give in to their desperate desires for sleep. 

 

They’re both so busy that they don’t have much time to talk during the day. Sometimes it feels as though the only words they exchange are at one in the morning, calming each other down after they inevitably wake up screaming. 

 

Owen notices the toll court is taking on her when it occurs to him that her nightmares are no longer waking him up in the middle of the night because she is no longer sleeping. At all. 

 

He catches her up at two-thirty in the morning, anxiously combing through  _ hours  _ of news stories that have even the slightest relation to Jurassic World. She doesn’t hear him come into their living room, or maybe she simply chooses to ignore his footsteps, and he can’t help but notice how unbelievably  _ broken  _ she looks. 

 

“Claire?” He says softly, cautiously approaching his girlfriend.

 

“Hmm?” Is her only response as she continues to focus on her computer screen.

 

“What are you doing?” He isn’t quite sure what else to say. 

 

She doesn’t respond.

 

“Claire?” Owen tries again, taking a few more steps towards her. 

 

“ _ What _ ?” Claire sighs exasperatedly, slamming the lid of her computer shut and spinning in her chair to face Owen. 

 

“Are you okay?” It feels like a ridiculous question to ask, because Owen most definitely already knows the bags under her red-rimmed eyes are answer enough.

 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Her voice is soft and childlike, almost like she doesn’t want to express any of her turbulent emotions, because she  _ doesn’t _ ; yet the tears are slowly beginning to pool in the corners of her eyes and she realizes that maybe she can’t keep it in anymore. “I’m perfectly fine.”

 

On the last word, the first sob tears from her throat, and Owen rushes forward to gather her in his arms. She sinks into his embrace as though she belongs there, shaking hands clinging to the folds of his shirt in an effort to hold on to something  _ real _ . Someone safe. 

 

She buries her face in the crook of his neck while he gently strokes her hair. He is whispering something in her ear, over and over again, but she doesn’t process a single word that leaves his mouth; all Claire can hear are terrified screams and the heavy footfalls of unnatural, extinct beasts and the sound of her own blood roaring in her ears.

 

It eventually occurs to her that Owen is promising that she is okay. Or, at the very least, she will be. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that neither is the case. 

 

***

 

Claire Dearing is not one to admit when she is wrong, (or when Owen Grady is right, for that matter) but she realizes that she was  _ very  _ wrong about one thing: burying her trauma under a mountain of work and responsibility was  _ not  _ going to make her feel better. 

 

The decision takes weeks of discussion and prompting from Owen, her nephews, Karen, her lawyers… anyone who seems to think they deserve to get a word in regarding  _ her  _ mental health takes any opportunity to do so. Their incessant (yet irritating) begging is effective, however, because she finally goes to see a psychologist. She tells herself that she really only caved to shut them all up; truthfully, the reality of everything they said ultimately became apparent to her.

 

She hasn’t slept through the night in weeks. She doesn’t eat. There are days (mainly the ones on which she isn’t required to make a court appearance) that Claire doesn’t even get out of bed. She snaps at Owen over the most ridiculous of things, and their relationship has been reduced to nothing more than human contact and occasional arguments. 

 

So yes, clearly the events that transpired at Jurassic World have left Claire in a mental, physical, and emotional state that can be described as anything  _ but  _ “okay.” 

 

Seeing the doctor helps. Her psychologist is incredibly kind and supportive, albeit occasionally visibly unnerved regarding the subject matter of their sessions. She spends those hour-long visits describing her guilt, devastation, and any other painful emotion that surfaces while she talks.

 

Talking about it is hard. Recounting her vivid dreams - dreams that are filled with hazy images of monsters and the people she loves the most in the world dying before her eyes; dreams that expose the darkest parts of her soul - to a woman she barely knows hurts far more than she can begin to explain, but it somehow  _ helps _ . Somehow, little by little, Claire feels the weight of it all leaving her shoulders. 

 

The psychologist quickly recommends that she also see a psychiatrist, who puts her on an antidepressant. Claire initially isn’t certain that drugs are the answer to her problems (it took a small army to convince her to even verbally tackle those problems) but she soon finds that her head isn’t quite so foggy all of the time, she has enough energy to at the very least get up to face the day, and she is able (more often than not) to sleep at night. These are welcome feelings, ones she hasn’t experienced in so long that she almost forgot what they felt like.  

 

Claire doesn’t kid herself. She knows that the trauma she experienced will never fade completely, but  _ God  _ does it feel good to have the slightest bit of relief. 

 

The trial finally ends almost two weeks after she goes into counseling, which contributes to her progressing recovery.  _ Of course _ the Masrani Corporation is found guilty and  _ of course  _ the media has a field day with the judge’s decision to increase the payments allotted to each victim, but it doesn’t faze Claire as much as it would have. She still feels sick to her stomach when her picture flashes across a television screen, or when the news inevitably continues to discuss any developments related to the incident, but she doesn’t retreat into herself anymore. She doesn’t cry at the drop of a hat or beat her steering wheel until her hands are bloody.

 

It’s a good change. 

 

Her relationship with Owen also improves, slowly but surely. He has been in counseling for months, since the very beginning of the Jurassic World aftermath, and has already managed to make some peace with the situation. The fact that she is sharing her feelings with the psychologist enables her to be more open with him. They spend long afternoons talking about anything and everything, and it is so nice to get to connect with him over something that doesn’t involve death, destruction, or dinosaur-filled flashbacks. It almost feels normal - like the happy ending she never thought she’d get. 

 

What happened at Jurassic World is something with which Claire will always have to live. She will  _ always  _ know that she is responsible for one of the greatest (and most ridiculously avoidable) tragedies in modern history; however, she has once again remembered how to breathe, even in the face of her most damning demons. She actually feels  _ better _ . 

 

It really is a shame that those “happily ever afters” hardly ever last. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is much appreciated!


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